


Angiospermae

by Misila



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Day 1, Hanahaki Disease, History, M/M, Mild Blood, RinHaru Week 2018, Romance, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 14:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17024367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misila/pseuds/Misila
Summary: There are a few marguerites, yellow and white like the suns Haruka used to draw when he was younger; there are some purple heaths and camellias and so, so many cherry blossoms— it’s not just a petal or a flower anymore: they come out in pairs, spikes and bunches, making up around half Haruka’s herbarium.He still thinks Rin has something to do with them.





	Angiospermae

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [RubyEliz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyEliz/pseuds/RubyEliz), who proofread the fic.

 

 

 

 

It begins when the school year is coming to an end.

A sore throat, sporadic coughing. Mackerel scratches its way down every time he swallows and Haruka reasons that he may need a bit longer to recover from the flu; he did fall into the freezing river, after all.

But then Rin announces that he will leave after the relay, declares so under the naked cherry tree like a promise, as if it were no big deal— he says that he is moving abroad, to a place whose language he doesn’t even understand, to pursue the dream his father could never achieve.

And Haruka wants to throw something at Rin, wants to yell at him for selfishly making everyone dance to his tune to get what he wanted and leaving afterwards; but instead he barricades himself in the bathtub for hours, ribs so tight around his lungs breathing hurts as the water runs cold.

There is something stuck in his throat, and Haruka has no way to prove it but he _knows_ it’s Rin’s fault.

 

 

 

 

They win the relay.

They get a medal each and a trophy, and coach Sasabe captures the feat in a picture of the four of them. Rin wraps an arm around Haruka’s shoulders throughout the whole ceremony as if he belonged there, so close the droplets rolling down Haruka’s skin evaporate at the warmth Rin radiates.

“Oi, get off me,” he grunts, and Rin tears his gaze off Nagisa, eyes wide and bright— always bright. “You’re heavy.”

“Aw, come on,” Rin teases, sharp canines glinting mischievous, “you know you’re going to miss me, deep down. How about a proper farewell?” he suggests, and he leans even closer, lips puckered in a mock kiss.

And Haruka’s eyes widen but there are thorns blocking his throat, so he jerks his head away, trying to swallow his heart back down before it snaps the prickles in half.

A shudder crawls down his spine, following a stray drop of water; but his insides are on fire.

 

 

 

 

Makoto keeps throwing worried glances at him all the way home.

Haruka would tell him to mind his own business but the incessant coughing rattling his entire frame hasn’t allowed him to string more than two words together since they buried their trophy in the swim club’s back yard, so he glares at Makoto’s every attempt to speak, rushes up the stone stairs leading to his home without wanting to see the creases that concern etches between his friend’s eyebrows.

By the time he walks inside though, wobbly legs giving out under the violent hacking, his chest burns and every cough claws up his throat. Haruka falls to his knees, curls into himself until his forehead touches the floor, foolishly hoping the pain will leave if he becomes small enough.

He recognises his mother’s steps as she rushes along the hallway, covering his mouth to keep coughing upon looking up, if only out of habit. Tension coils in the back of his head, his stomach and the corners of his eyes— he retches and his vision wavers.

“Oh, darling, what is it?” she whispers, her long, delicate hands cradling his cheeks. Something soft and small reaches Haruka’s tongue; he spits it on his palm and curls his fingers around it, tries to breathe slowly enough to put his mother at ease. “Let’s get you water, okay?”

Perhaps for the first time in his life, Haruka shakes his head at the offering.

“’m not choking…” he breathes out, closing his eyes at the kiss that lands on his forehead. He knows, before she confirms it, that he doesn’t have a fever either.

His mother still ushers him to his bedroom, though it’d be more accurate to say that she carries him; for Haruka doesn’t quite trust his legs. She looks satisfied at the decreased rate of his coughing when they reach the first floor though, so she leaves him alone to change into his pyjamas.

Haruka falls on his bed, sprawled out and still making an effort to keep breathing, and he opens his hand to find a pale pink petal.

 

 

 

 

The next morning Rin is gone.

So is Haruka’s cough it seems— even though his chest still feels smaller, as if unable to take as much air in as just a few weeks prior.

Haruka hides the petal between the pages of the thickest book he finds, under another pile of books for good measure. Every night he checks to make sure it’s still there. Part of him wishes it disappeared so that he could convince himself the days before Rin left were but a brief incident and stop thinking about it.

Because he spat it out, and that’s what has been bothering him for days, because according to everything he knows it’s impossible.

_Magic._

The cherry trees are in bloom on the first day of middle school. It occurs to Haruka that Rin would have enjoyed the sight, but as his gaze strays off the pink scales swirling around him and Makoto he can feel his airways closing off again.

Haruka forces himself to take deep breaths, wishing that willing his heart to slow down were as easy.

 

 

 

 

That very night, as he’s brushing his teeth, a whole cherry blossom escapes between his lips and falls to the sink.

 

 

 

 

Rin is having a hard time.

Haruka reads about his struggles in a letter that Sousuke received but was meant for him. That swimmers there are so much bigger than in Japan. That he has yet to get the hang of English and he often has to resort to gestures that cause his classmates to laugh.

That he’s falling behind.

(It hurts again.)

That Rin, a whole hemisphere and nearly five thousand miles away, is still doing his best to keep up with his new teammates— to surpass Haruka.

And Haruka does the only thing he can.

He dives into the water, even if it feels dead, even if the first relay he swam weighs like lead in his heart— he swims through the spiritless water to soothe the recurring ache in his lungs, because coughing up flowers isn’t an excuse to slack off and he wants to beat Rin and make it count.

Until the day he has to leave the classroom because he can’t stop coughing and on his way to the infirmary the familiar thorns lodge themselves so deep in his chest he gags. Haruka doubles over, gasping for air, twin tears streaming down his cheeks as something soft slips out of his lips.

When he opens his eyes, there is a white marguerite staring up at him from the floor.

 

 

 

 

(He has never heard about this sort of magic.)

 

 

 

 

Haruka is diagnosed with asthma.

He only half-listens to the doctor as she instructs him on how to use an inhaler, toying with the item instead. The gist of it is he has to carry the thing everywhere, because he never knows when he may have an attack and bodies tend not to take well to not getting enough oxygen to keep functioning.

Haruka already loathes everything about it.

But he stays silent as the woman explains everything he needs to know, keeps quiet when she realises he’s not paying attention and starts addressing only his mother; there is no mention to any botanical symptoms, but Haruka supposes she is the expert and asthma is quite convincing a diagnosis.

It’s not like he said anything about the flowers growing in his lungs, anyway— he isn’t sure anyone would believe him unless they were present the very moment they fell from his mouth.

Because coughing up flowers is all but ordinary, something that clearly belongs to the realm of fairy tales; and perhaps Rin would consider it romantic but it scares Haruka to death. And Haruka may not care about understanding most things that don’t concern him, but this is happening _to him_ , who doesn’t even like fantasy stories.

(It’s Rin’s fault.)

The only magic Haruka believes in is the water’s ever welcoming nature, accepting and empathetic.

It has to be asthma.

 

 

 

 

The inhaler doesn’t stop Haruka from spitting flowers increasingly often, but it does help with his coughing. Along with the long hours he spends in the pool after school, every other day he awakens to flowers scattered on his pillow rather than the feeling he is suffocating with stray petals.

 

 

 

 

Haruka keeps each and every flower.

He squeezes them dry under piles of his father’s books, sticks them to the blank pages of a notebook he never used once they’re thin like paper and fragile like porcelain. He doesn’t really know why he bothers, but the different colours look beautiful as he pieces them together and he traces their shape with his fingers when he can’t sleep, recalling what he knows about the species he recognises.

There are a few marguerites, yellow and white like the suns Haruka used to draw when he was younger; there are some purple heaths and camellias and so, so many cherry blossoms— it’s not just a petal or a flower anymore: they come out in pairs, spikes and bunches, making up around half Haruka’s herbarium.

He still thinks Rin has something to do with them.

 

 

 

 

A cold winter afternoon, Haruka confirms his suspicions.

He wishes he hadn’t.

 

 

 

 

Haruka walks into Rin on his way home, sees him half-hidden behind his scarf on the other side of the railway.

In the brief second before the train passes, flooding the cold with a deafening clattering that fades like an echo afterwards, it occurs to Haruka that Rin looks subdued— his posture slouched, his eyes downcast; but he blames it on the petals already struggling to push their way up his throat.

And when the barriers rise Haruka jogs across the tracks— he hasn’t seen Rin in _nearly a year_ and he can’t help a pang of resentment because not even one of the letters he knows Rin wrote over the past months was addressed to him. Not a phone call, either, even though Makoto admitted long ago he had given Rin Haruka’s home phone number along with his own.

Maybe it’s a childish thing to be upset over.

(But then again, Haruka didn’t write either.)

Something about Rin’s dulled gaze embitters Haruka’s enthusiasm; it must be the cold. The request for a race doesn’t come as a surprise.

The tension coiling around Rin’s every word does.

They swim in the very lanes they did last year, the first time Rin attended practice there; and in spite of the excitement sending tremors through his skin and the stems and branches spreading in his lungs Haruka wins— far too easily.

There is no satisfaction. There is nothing to celebrate a victory that doesn’t feel as such, not when Rin’s frustrated tears carve paths down his reddened cheeks, much less when he yanks his wrist off Haruka’s grip and mutters that he’s going to quit swimming, barely able to not keep crying as he runs away.

And Haruka wants to chase after him, and he breaks into a sprint in Rin’s wake and calls his name once he makes it out of the building; but soon his legs burn, his voice reaching only as far as the white puffs of air he gasps out, every _Rin_ reduced to a feeble wheeze.

But Rin doesn’t hear it –or maybe he doesn’t want to–; he runs down the deserted road, further and further away. Haruka drags feet that weigh like lead after him, blind to his predictable failure as a single syllable keeps falling from his lips with neither air nor sound, as if he could make up for the low volume if he repeats Rin’s name enough times.

Rin, who is upset and crying; and Haruka doesn’t know what happened but he doesn’t need to, he just wants to find Rin and fix this, because all Haruka can make out is that it’s his fault.

It’s swimming with him that made Rin cry.

The first cough makes Haruka retch, but there is nothing in his stomach; Haruka crosses his arms over his chest, a futile attempt to ward off the pain as his body keeps rattling, tries to breathe in deeply and fails. The freezing air claws down his throat and the thorns and flowers scratch their way up and Haruka _can’t breathe_ , can’t get the damned blossoms out of his clogged airways fast enough and can’t placate the tremor in his hands enough to unzip his bag and find the stupid inhaler.

Meanwhile, Rin’s hair vanishes behind a corner.

Haruka’s pulse echoes in his eardrums, quick, too loud to let him hear his own sob when his legs fail to keep supporting him— the pain shooting up his knees where they hit the pavement is distant, further than the faint whistling he has no option but to acknowledge as his own. Only the blotches of colours carpeting the ground before him remain vivid, the pile of oranges and pale pinks growing every time he opens his eyes, as real as the helplessness making his blood boil with every unsuccessful attempt to stand back up.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, in a place tucked away from the panic clouding his senses, Haruka realises there are way too many flowers speckled in red. But he doesn’t have an ounce of reasoning in him to care about it, not even as his sight blurs and primroses and calendulas and cherry blossoms merge together with blood and growing black blotches; they yearn for him, bring him down with a pull stronger than gravity itself.

“Rin,” Haruka calls once more, writhing against the pillow of flowers beneath his cheek— a lone tear escapes the corner of his eye, despair flooding his vanishing consciousness as petals brush soft along his tongue. “Rin,” he coughs again, pushing them out of his lips.

Haruka catches a glimpse of purple before darkness takes him in its freezing claws.

 

 

 

 

(If it’s magic, it’s not a kind spell.)

 

 

 

 

Tears gather in the corners of his eyes when Haruka tries to move, to sit up and learn more about the whiteness caging him; a dull ache clings to his neck, his abdomen— pain presses down on his chest as Haruka feels yet more flowers piling up in the back of his throat.

Memories slip through the cracks in the feeble wall unconsciousness built around him as soon as petals crawl up to his mouth. His joints complain at his attempt to push the hand squeezing his shoulder away— but after a couple of coughs a flower rolls down his lips, finding its place in the crook of his neck, and Haruka levels a mellowed glare that freezes when he notices Makoto’s wide, scared eyes.

His friend only reaches out, grabs what Haruka now identifies as an entire spike of purple flowers.

Hyacinths.

“Why,” Haruka chokes out, then purses his lips together as if that could soothe his burning throat. Makoto sets the flowers on the bedside table, along with others— mostly purple, but there are also smaller ones, red and yellow. The ever-present cherry blossoms are no longer a surprise.

Haruka can’t bring himself to speak when Makoto’s worried gaze pins him to the mattress again, so he focuses on keeping his breathing steady instead. Confusion carves a frown between his eyebrows at the slight pressure over his cheeks; Haruka struggles to bring a hand to his face to find a tube strapped across his cheekbones, hooking behind his ears to keep two shorter ones in his nostrils.

“The doctor said you weren’t breathing,” comes Makoto’s quiet explanation, though it sounds more like a plea. He’s standing on the side of the bed, hands clasped together but still shaking; just this once Haruka swallows down the kneejerk need to tell him to mind his own business. “And coach Sasabe called home,” Makoto adds, suddenly in a rush to justify his presence, “because he tried to contact your mum first but nobody picked up. But she already arrived, so it’s okay…”

Haruka hums, grimaces at the pain vibrating in his throat.

He can’t take his gaze off the pile of flowers. Partly because the alternative is facing Makoto’s visible fear, partly because some of them are new and now he _knows_ —

…it’s not _his_ fault.

“Rin—” his voice shatters, white-hot pain piercing through the garden in his chest, the dam keeping his tears at bay— “did he… Where…”

Makoto furrows his eyebrows.

“Rin? You saw Rin?”

“He was crying,” Haruka recalls, fingers balling up, fist pressed against his heart. “He wanted to race, but then… Then…”

He trails off, expecting a new coughing fit; they always seem to come laced with anxiousness, with worry, with fear—

…with Rin.

But the itch in his throat is oddly bearable; the pain made of remainders, not omens.

Haruka looks up, puzzled, meets Makoto’s troubled expression.

“What?”

Makoto shakes his head.

“You knew it wasn’t asthma,” he mutters. Not a guess, but a statement; and Haruka cannot deny it, so he just closes his eyes until his friend speaks again. “The doctor said there is a treatment.”

He sounds the opposite of hopeful.

 

 

 

 

There are flowers in Haruka’s lungs.

He sees them perched on his ribs, their pale silhouettes standing out against black film; they have already taken root and they feed off the nutrients in his blood, like parasites slowly eating away at him. A horror story rather than a fairy tale.

There is no way to heal it, not with how tightly the plants cling to his lungs. The doctor explains that often the illness goes away on its own, particularly in children; but Haruka’s case is exceptional— he needs medication to survive the symptoms.

“How long will it take?” his mother asks as Haruka examines the bottle of black pills he imagines tasting like liquorice, weighing the prospect of telling the doctor to stop referring to him as a _child_.

“That’s hard to tell.” The doctor ruffles Haruka’s hair, and if he weren’t still sore from all the coughing Haruka would slap his hand away. “It’s strange to see the illness in such an advanced state in a kid… But at the same time, he’ll most likely get over that crush soon. What’s her name? Your friend mentioned it earlier…”

“Rin,” Haruka hisses, and he’s about to make it clear that it is _his_ name and he doesn’t appreciate a perfect stranger discussing a crush he doesn’t have with his mother; but something about the woman’s sharp stare freezes him.

 _Rin_ , and in spite of the drug flooding his bloodstream the boy’s tearstained face is terribly vivid.

 _Rin_ , and his mother’s visible displeasure squeezes his stomach.

 _Rin_ , and Haruka’s fingers curl around fistfuls of his blanket, knuckles white with realisation— that he doesn’t know where Rin went or whether he found some comfort but he doesn’t want to see him crying again, least of all because of him.

And yet, guilt is all there is.

No coughing, no distress, no pain tearing his heart in half.

“Are there any secondary effects to the medicine?”

“Somnolence, perhaps difficulty focusing, fatigue…” The doctor scratches his chin, pensive. “Nothing remarkable in the short term.”

Haruka picks the bottle from his lap, leans back on the mattress as he shakes it absent-mindedly.

It sounds ten times worse than the inhaler.

 

 

 

 

Haruka can tell Makoto tries his best to not be overwhelming, so he keeps the certainty that his friend fails spectacularly to himself.

It’s not out of understanding or lack of annoyance; the source of his irritation becomes actually Haruka’s own apathy, but not for long. Though Haruka is too sick for the black pills to completely soothe his lungs, they keep more than flowers at bay.

 

 

 

 

In spite of the medicine, his chest still hurts every now and then, when he dreams of Rin’s defeated expression and there are more flowers than usual.

Haruka spends most of the time in his bathtub, shoulder-deep in lacklustre water that gives him nothing but tepid indifference.

 

 

 

 

The afternoon when Haruka nearly died is not a nightmare anymore.

It was never one in the first place, at least not _because_ his lungs failed and he collapsed; but with every dream his guilt shrinks, uneasiness over a face that gets blurrier every time Haruka tries to recall it growing distant.

Not that big of a deal, which Haruka blew out of proportion.

So what if Rin lost? It’s not the first time; he’ll get over it.

So what, that he cried? Sousuke once said it’s not rare.

Perhaps Haruka hurt him, but it was Rin who asked for a race. He is the one who made a scene and left Haruka choking on flowers he planted in his lungs.

 

 

 

 

Haruka spits hydrangeas and forget-me-nots and cherry blossoms night after night, but the black pills keep them at bay, not letting them grow too much in his chest.

Haruka still keeps them, preserves every blossom to make his herbarium grow; but now they aren’t beautiful.

Behind the mist settled in his ears, his eyes and his heart, they are just flowers.

 

 

 

 

Haruka doesn’t swim competitively anymore.

He quit as soon as he was discharged from the hospital, when the wound was still fresh. His reasoning was childish, he realises now; why should he care about Rin, when he will probably never come back?

Haruka doesn’t resume swimming, though.

Because of his lungs.

 

 

 

 

Every few months, Haruka is told to stop taking his medication. Every few months, his doctor assumes that Haruka already got over his supposed crush on Rin.

Every few months the fog lifts, and Haruka nearly drowns in what awaits on the other side.

 

 

 

 

(It was never a fairy tale, but a curse.)

 

 

 

 

Makoto’s constant presence by his side reminds Haruka of a ghost. Haruka looks at him, hears his small talk on their way to and from school, but he hardly ever pays enough attention to remember what his friend says after a couple of minutes.

But it’s alright. He doesn’t need to. He doesn’t need anyone; not Makoto, not his parents and definitely not Rin. All he needs is the bottle of black pills that dull the world and his routine made of walking to the school and the bathtub and then working on his herbarium if he has to.

There are barely any new cherry blossoms to add to the collection lately.

It’s not a problem. Cherry blossoms are small and fragile and break easily and Haruka still retains some sense of beauty, even if he perceives everything as if he were inside a glass bell, colours dulled and sounds muffled.

Soon his doctor will understand, the way Haruka instinctively did years ago, that he will have to take the pills for the rest of his life. To be safe from the outside forever, without any more failed attempts.

It’s alright, Haruka repeats to himself, a hollow where panic should be.

He’s alright.

He’s alive. He’s breathing.

(He’s safe from love and he’s alone.)

 

 

 

 

Halfway through their first year in high school, Makoto says,

“You’re doing better now,”

and Haruka doesn’t look up from his feet. He’s not sure what Makoto means (that he isn’t as tempted to throw the black pills away as the last time he stopped taking them, that he got sad when Makkou died and was able to grab a pencil for long enough to sketch his late dog) or what he’s supposed to answer, so he doesn’t.

Who cares— not him.

Haruka can barely remember what happened with Rin these days. A classmate for two months, a teammate in a relay.

A pushy kid that threw a fit.

(Someone so unimportant Haruka’s life depends on his ability to forget him.)

 

 

 

 

And so, the first day of his second year in high school, everything catches up with him at once.

 

 

 

 

Nagisa arrives first, cheerful and carefree and just like Haruka barely remembers him through the fog that is all he can breathe nowadays. He talks about swimming, ignores Makoto’s pointed looks at Haruka and brings up the matter of the trophy the three of them and Rin buried in their old swim club.

Once upon a time, Haruka would have looked daggers at Makoto for daring to imply he needs to be given a special treatment; but it’s not worth the trouble.

Haruka raises his head at the mention of the trophy though, like a rabbit upon hearing a twig creaking and looking up to find a wolf staring at it among the trees.

“The trophy?” he hears himself repeat, interest too foreign a concept to notice Makoto jumps at his voice.

_Do I really speak that little?_

“Yeah! Let’s dig it up before the building is demolished. What do you say?”

Haruka looks at Nagisa, then looks at Makoto, who stares back with eyes so wide he seems to fear Haruka will combust spontaneously any moment now.

But Haruka can only think that this –the pain, the flowers, the oxygen slipping between his fingers and the black light that devoured it all– started the day they buried the trophy, after a relay he often forgets is real.

He swallows down the itch in his throat before it escalates to a cough.

“We should go,” he agrees, ignoring Makoto’s audible gasp.

 

 

 

 

Side-effects of any drugs aside, Haruka isn’t really surprised to see Rin.

He felt the shift in the air in the morning, saw the single cherry blossom petal floating in the bathtub. The way his hand flew to his swimsuit on its own when he was getting dressed, not really knowing why but not having any reason to fight against the first variation in his routine in years.

That doesn’t mean Haruka is in any way prepared to face Rin, to watch that silent figure approaching along a dark corridor of the abandoned swimming club, the red eyes Haruka is ninety percent sure were too bright four years ago dull in the shadow of his cap.

Rin isn’t crying anymore, but all of him looks tamed. As if he, too, had been hidden away from his feelings.

But then he challenges Haruka to a race and Haruka hasn’t swum a single lap since that afternoon but he can’t not accept, and the disappointment at the empty pool, the sheer sorrow as Rin drops the trophy he trained so hard to win as a child, twists knots around his stomach.

“Are you okay?” comes Makoto’s predictable concern.

For the first time, it’s not apathy that stops Haruka from snapping out an angry reply. It’s not even the sight of Rin walking away, taller and broader but still not looking back as he’s devoured by shadows.

It’s the shock that rattles his entire frame— because he takes the black pills religiously and _this_ is exactly what they were supposed to avoid.

 

 

 

 

As soon as he comes to the following morning, Haruka fabricates a world in which Rin never came back and yesterday was but a dream, and in spite of the echo of his pulse hammering against his eardrums he nearly convinces himself.

Then he opens his eyes to a bed covered in forget-me-nots and asters and cherry blossoms, and the shards of the lie cut deep as it shatters.

Always cherry blossoms.

(Always Rin.)

 

 

 

 

That very night, Haruka sneaks inside Rin’s school and they finally swim.

Rin wins.

He’s angry about it.

Haruka shoves him away, manages to stay upright until he’s back home— he stays kneeling on the _genkan_ for hours, curled up and hugging himself just like that first time; morning comes to flood the tapestry of flowers scattered across the floor.

 

 

 

 

It’s not that Haruka stopped taking his medication.

It’s that the second Rin walked back in his life the black pills stopped doing their job. Breathing is becoming hard again, yearning and guilt tightening their grip around his throat with every day that passes.

Now there is no doubt— it’s Rin’s fault.

 

 

 

 

Nagisa suggests creating a swim club. Haruka agrees immediately.

“Huh?!” Haruka looks away from Makoto, sips on his tea even though swallowing hurts. “You’re really on board with this?”

Still staring down, Haruka nods; Nagisa lets out a joyful noise and starts musing about everything they have to do.

“But… Haru,” Makoto lowers his voice, “in your condition, you shouldn’t—…”

He trails off at Haruka’s instinctive glare, lips pressed into a thin line.

“I can swim,” he hisses, angrier than intended— but suddenly every time he was too caught up in his own world to reply to Makoto’s meddlesomeness is back in his memory at once, an alarming amount of irritation piling up in the back of his sore throat. “I didn’t quit because of the flowers,” he adds, more quietly.

It’s true, so it hurts.

“I know that.”

The expression Haruka finds upon glancing up reminds him of the one he awoke to a winter afternoon long ago.

 

 

 

 

In the rather vague scheme Haruka bothered to sketch in his mind when he agreed to start a swim club so that he could take part in tournaments with Rin again, the idea was simple: Rin wants a race— a proper one, so that his victory counts.

The problem with this is Haruka has never been willing to lose, so he can’t promise Rin will beat him.

(Isn’t that, deep down, the very reason he quit swimming three years ago?)

But Rin is back. Rin is different and angry and he’s swimming again, in spite of that faraway winter afternoon Haruka often chokes on; and once he gets what he wants the annoying, bright kid that gets clearer day after day in Haruka’s memory will be back for good.

And then maybe he will stop coughing up flowers, maybe breathing will be easy again and maybe the black pills will do their job if everything else fails.

 

 

 

 

After years without walking close to any pool, swimming so often is like coming home after an eternity abroad.

It is also the only thing that can relieve the pain in Haruka’s chest these days. Breathing is bearable in the water, the flowers kept at bay until he waves Makoto goodbye and practically crawls up the stone stairs back home. He barely sleeps at night, throat burning with every blossom that piles up around him on the mattress in the morning.

So he swims, and swims and keeps swimming.

And, in prefecturals, he and Rin race again.

 

 

 

 

It’s a close race— neither would have had it any other way.

Haruka still loses.

 

 

 

 

He’s still struggling to catch his breath as he hears Rin’s joyful laughter spread across the water.

“Haru,” he calls after climbing out of the pool, and Haruka glances up to see him standing behind the starting block, all angles and white teeth. “I win.”

Haruka narrows his eyes, brings his hand to the base of his throat— it itches again, and the one to blame for it is right before him, his smile stretching nearly cruel.

“This means I’ll never swim with you again.”

There is something twisted lurking in Rin’s eyes, something that enjoys the dread in Haruka’s gaze.

_No._

“Never.”

 

 

 

 

Haruka wants to call for Rin— wants to run after him. But, just like the first time, he can’t move.

He climbs out of the pool clumsily, for a second nearly succumbing to the water’s hungry tentacles curling around his ankles; but Rin doesn’t look back, disappears from his field of sight all over again and takes with him the sunlight and the air Haruka was just starting to enjoy again.

 

 

 

 

 

A smug smirk clings to his lips, his cheeks stretched nearly uncomfortably. It’s been a long time since Rin smiled this much.

But he won— he beat Haruka, at their best, and now there is no humiliation embittering his victory, not even at the shadow of his many failures in Australia. Rin can finally keep moving forward, make his father’s dream come true. Without the trail of rumpled water in Haruka’s wake clouding his sight, there is nothing between Rin and his future.

A sliver of pink halts his steps though as he walks out of the changing room. Rin crouches down, frowns at the single cherry blossom someone dropped in the middle of the corridor.

He squeezes his eyes shut, but upon opening them again the flower is still there, small and innocent.

In July.

Rin picks it up between his fingers, not entirely sure he’s relieved to find it’s real.

But he has to meet up with his team, so he gets up, shoves the pink flower into the pocket of his sweatshirt and resumes walking until he nearly walks into Makoto’s annoyingly broad chest.

Rin takes a couple of steps back to get his bearings; Nagisa and Ryugazaki ( _the replacement_ , his mind supplies, more resentful than it should) stand on either side of his former classmate, but it’s the green eyes Rin used to resort to for help when he and Haruka butted heads that attract his attention.

It’s Nagisa who speaks first though.

“Hey, Rin-chan.” Rin’s eyes narrow the tiniest bit at the nickname, but Nagisa neither notices nor cares. “Have you seen Haru-chan?”

“Huh? Haru?” Rin raises an eyebrow, delighted by this new discovery. “Wasn’t he the one who doesn’t care about winning or losing?”

“It’s not that,” Makoto intervenes, voice thick with something deeper than uneasiness. “We don’t know if he’s okay.”

At that, Rin’s right eyebrow rises to mimic its twin, scepticism shaping into shock. “Don’t be dramatic,” he snorts, trying to accept that Makoto’s protective side has magnified throughout the years. “He just lost a race; he’ll get over it.”

 _I know better than anyone_ , he doesn’t add, euphoria slipping between his fingers like water. He walks around the trio, knowing Mikoshiba will be more of a pain the longer he takes to get back with his team.

“He’s sick.” Makoto speaks quietly, yet for the first time there is anger in his voice. But that’s not what freezes Rin— neither is Nagisa’s gasp sinking cold claws down his spine. “Has been for years… And he tried to hide it, but it’s only got worse since you came back.”

Rin spins on his heels, suddenly hyperaware of his heartbeat drumming against his ribs, his breath scratching his throat. The soft brush of the cherry blossom against his fingers, in the pocket of his sweatshirt.

Whatever fleeting hope that Makoto was joking vanishes at the hard stare meeting his confusion.

“What do you mean, ‘sick’?”

“He has flowers in his lungs.” Makoto’s hands curl into fists. “They make breathing hard, and he sometimes coughs them up. It’s worse when he’s upset.” The thin line his lips draw, parallel to his clenched jaw, pauses his words for a second. “Three years ago, before Christmas, he was in the hospital for a week… All I know is that he was with you before he nearly suffocated to death.”

Rin shakes his head, trying to swallow even though his mouth is dry. He remembers that day— of course he does; he remembers the frustration, the despair, Haruka’s stubborn calling…

“You’re kidding,” he hisses, words thin.

“He’s… not,” Ryugazaki argues. His gaze hops away from Rin’s glare, halts on Makoto’s visible worry to end focusing on Nagisa’s terrified expression. “I’ve read about that illness… It’s not common, but it’s not rare, either. Most people think it doesn’t exist, because it’s been used in many works of fiction… Coughing up flowers over your loved one sounds poetic indeed.”

“No,” Rin replies, stubborn. Of course he has read about that stuff, and of course that illness is but a dumb trope. And he’s not anyone’s loved one— Haruka has made that very clear ever since they met. “Haru… I didn’t—” he shakes his head— “he never cared! He can keep floating on the pool or whatever it is he wants to do now. He doesn’t have to race me anymore; he must be _thrilled_.”

(And yet, the small petals in his pocket burn against his knuckles.)

Makoto’s eyes widen.

“You… You told him that?”

Rin’s gut instinct is to ward off the accusation laced with his friend’s voice, but his throat is closed off— because maybe he wanted to hurt Haruka earlier. Maybe he hissed those poisoned words just to see if they would be able to pierce through that mask of impassiveness.

(Maybe he achieved something far more terrible.)

“I have to find him.”

 

 

 

 

The sun is setting by the time Rin, Makoto, Nagisa and Rei stop looking for Haruka in the stadium— he’s not there, and Rin thinks about how he ran away from Haruka that damned day three years ago and wonders if his friend can run at all.

Makoto’s teacher takes them back to Iwatobi, not quite understanding their rush. Once in the small town they split up: Makoto, Nagisa and Rei head for the neighbourhood where Haruka lives, while Rin heads for the opposite end— towards the high school, where the biggest body of water in Iwatobi is.

Except for the sea.

Rin pulls at his hair to stop dwelling on that idea.

He knows he’s on the right track when he spots a flower that shouldn’t be there lying on the ground— another cherry blossom; there are a couple more ahead, and some more beyond them. Like a trail of breadcrumbs, they lead Rin towards the pool behind the main building, growing more abundant as he advances.

Soon different ones join the pink petals Rin never thought he could look at with such dread, composing a mosaic that tightens his stomach.

“Haru?” he calls, voice dissolving into the night as he walks in the changing room. The door that leads to the pool is open; under the moonlight Rin sees a disorderly pile of clothes on top of an abandoned bag, catches glimpses of flowers scattered on the surface. “Haru,” he repeats, though he can barely find his voice. Rin drops his own bag as he advances, both hasty and not wanting to step outside and find— “Haru!”

Under the full moon, the water is clear enough for Rin to see him among camellias and roses, lying still at the bottom of the pool, pale enough to be a ghost.

Rin cannot believe he was _happy_ to see pain in Haruka’s expression just a few hours ago; there are no flowers in his chest, but he can hardly breathe as he dives in, not wasting time in taking his clothes off.

Haruka flinches when Rin grabs his arm, eyes opening wide at the touch; they’re electric blue beneath the surface, but the second Rin pulls him up he convulses in his arms, wheezing and coughing and struggling to spit out all the water.

A primrose falls from his lips, sticks to Rin’s sweatshirt as he drags Haruka to the edge of the pool, pushing him out before hauling himself up.

Haruka lies on his side, toes brushing the water as increasingly violent hacking wrecks his entire frame, water and flowers rolling across the concrete— stained in blood, Rin notices, shivering out of everything but cold.

“Haru, hey.” Rin grabs Haruka’s shoulder, pulse migrating to his eardrums at the agonising whistle slipping out between Haruka’s lips as he struggles to get air into his lungs. Haruka glances up, and for the first time he seems to _see_ Rin— trembling hands crawl up Rin’s sweatshirt, feebly tugging at the fabric to pull Rin closer.

Instead Rin brings Haruka up, wraps him in an uncertain hug; but he doesn’t let go even as Haruka coughs again, head nestled in the crook of Rin’s neck.

“Haru, listen to me,” he pleads, and he can feel the bloodied petals falling on his lap but he doesn’t stop. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t… No, that’s not it. I never meant what I said. I didn’t know you didn’t—… I thought the race had been a bother, I…”

“Wasn’t,” Haruka chokes out. “For me. But you don’t—…”

“No, I do,” Rin cuts him off, shaking his head. “I want to swim with you, I always have…” He hugs Haruka closer. “Earlier, I just…” Rin exhales softly, but that doesn’t stop the burning in the back of his throat, the itching in his eyes. “I wanted to hurt you, because I’m hurting too. And I’m so sorry.”

Haruka inhales softly, and there is whistling but it doesn’t resemble a wheeze as much as it does a sob.

“Please, breathe,” Rin begs, voice shattering. Tears burn down his cheeks at the sight of the flowers adrift in the pool, swirling around Haruka’s ankles. “Don’t be upset… Not over me being an asshole.”

Haruka doesn’t speak, but his grip on Rin’s sweatshirt tightens as he struggles to fill his lungs with air, to let go of flowers— fewer now as they pool between them, his breathing steadily slowing down. And Rin has no idea what to do, other than mentally kicking himself like Haruka probably wants to, fingers threading through black hair in a wary attempt at comfort.

“’s that…” Haruka halts, breathes a few times before continuing: “why you’re here? _Guilt_?”

Rin’s eyes widen, hurt at the sudden sharpness in Haruka’s voice.

And his instinctive answer is _yes_ , but that’s not true. Or, rather, not all the truth.

“I’m here because I hate being away,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know whether his sincerity comes from the desperation to help Haruka breathe or if it’s the slow progress that encourages him to keep speaking. “Because all these years I convinced myself that what I needed to get better was being alone and not getting distracted, but all I am is lonely… It’s not your fault that I wanted to quit swimming back then.

“It’s because of you that I didn’t.”

Haruka raises his head, eyes wide and unfairly blue as he stares long and unapologetic and right into the bottom of Rin’s soul; and he’s soaking wet but his gaze is too bright for the droplets running down his cheeks not to be tears.

“…I had forgotten,” he muses, quiet enough to not be heard even by the flowers surrounding them. “It wasn’t just the bad that I stopped feeling.” His trembling hand flies to Rin’s cheek, pink petals stuck between his fingers. “But the cherry blossoms never went away… Of course they didn’t,” he scoffs, pushing red locks behind Rin’s ear; he sounds both frustrated and amused. “And then you came back.”

Rin isn’t quite sure he understands what any of that means; but it doesn’t matter, not as Haruka leans closer, and definitely not when his lips land on Rin’s— soft, determined yet still trembling.

Warm, alive and, against all odds, in his arms.

 

 

 

 

 

There are no more flowers in Haruka’s lungs.

No more pain, no more coughing.

It all left the night Rin found him drowning, the black pills no longer a need or a wish. It keeps getting brighter, louder with every day that passes— everything bothers him, hurts him and excites him in a way it couldn’t until Rin came back.

“I missed your temper,” Makoto comments at the eighth annoyed _will you ever drop the ‘chan’_ , and Rin snorts that he didn’t— because of course he is the reason the medicine stopped working in the first place.

Later, Haruka invites Rin home, shows him his herbarium and sits down next to him on his bed.

Most flowers are there— from the first pink petal to the gardenias Haruka found on his pillow the last morning he awoke to a colourful tapestry. The ones from the pool are still drying, squeezed under piles of books; but Haruka kept even the ones that nearly killed him that afternoon three years ago.

Rin says nothing, mouth falling open as he turns the pages, as his fingers trail along dry petals. He’s realising now what Haruka knew probably from the beginning— that the flowers are but witnesses of a story.

Their story.

“You can keep it,” Haruka hears himself mutter. Rin looks up, uneasiness clinging to his gaze. “It was always for you.”

Rin’s eyes widen, hesitate between the herbarium and Haruka’s stare; his lower lip trembles and Haruka remembers his silent crying by the pool the other night.

“You know, when I imagined you giving me flowers, this wasn’t really what I had in mind.”

“You imagined me giving you flowers?”

Heat gathers in Rin’s cheeks, red camelias paling in comparison.

“Sometimes,” he reluctantly admits.

There was a time when Rin would admit to way more embarrassing things without a trace of shame; but too many things have happened since then.

It doesn’t matter, Haruka thinks. Rin is back, swimming and smiling in spite of that defensive grumpiness that stings at times.

And he loves Haruka.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Angiospermae is a taxon of seed-producing plants, different from others in that they all produce flowers and fruits that contain the seeds.]
> 
> If you liked the fic, please consider leaving a comment. Thank you so much for reading!


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